Astronomy Solar and Planetary Small Awards 2026: Closed-Cycle Reference

Astronomy Solar and Planetary Small Awards 2026: Closed-Cycle Reference

The Astronomy solar and planetary small awards 2026 opportunity was a Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) grant call for solar system and planetary studies. The official UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) opportunity page now marks it Closed. Applications opened on 16 December 2025 and STFC had to receive them by 10 March 2026 at 4:00pm UK time. This page is therefore a historical reference, not an invitation to submit a late application.

The official page does not announce a later small-awards round or a replacement deadline. Keep the closed-cycle date in mind when reading the entry: deadline = '2026-03-10' records what actually happened, while historicalReference = true tells the site that this is an archive entry. Do not treat the date as a live deadline, and do not infer a 2027 application window from the award’s planned start date.

Verified status and key facts

The opportunity did not present a single maximum cash award in the funding-available section. Instead, it set the funding rate and detailed limits on people, duration, and project-specific costs. A realistic budget would therefore have needed to follow the resource guidance and justify the costs required for the proposed work. It would have been inaccurate to describe this as an unrestricted small grant or to promise a standard award amount.

What the call supported

The call covered research relevant to all aspects of the solar system. The official scope included theory, modelling, simulation, related software development, observation, experiment, and new technology research. Examples included solar physics and heliospheric physics; space-based terrestrial magnetospheric science and fundamental space plasma physics, excluding effects on Earth’s neutral atmosphere; and planetary science concerning the surfaces, interiors, atmospheres, ionospheres, and magnetospheres of solar system bodies other than Earth.

The scope also included studies of comets, asteroids, meteorites, and other solar system bodies. Laboratory work on meteorites, returned samples, solar system analogues, and related laboratory physics was eligible when it served the relevant research area. Blue-skies technology or instrumentation development could be proposed at technology readiness levels 1 to 4. A project that planned to exceed TRL 4 during the award would have been out of remit under the official guidance.

The boundary with neighbouring programmes mattered. Telescope and instrument operations costs were not within the remit when they were not directly linked to specific science outcomes during the grant period. For space-weather work, STFC supported non-Earth-oriented solar-terrestrial physics and primary exploitation of space-based facilities for solar-terrestrial physics. The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) was identified as responsible where the primary goal was understanding Earth’s environment from the deep interior through the upper atmosphere. Studies connected to the UK Space Agency’s Aurora programme for Mars exploration and sample return were directed to the UK Space Agency in the first instance because separate funding could be available.

The official page also said that applicants in potentially borderline areas should contact the STFC Astronomy Awards team before submitting. That advice was about checking the scientific remit, not about bypassing the formal eligibility rules or reopening the closed call.

Funding and resource limits

STFC stated that it would fund 80% of the full economic cost. The remaining part of the full economic cost was the standard institutional contribution; the call did not require additional matched funding beyond the standard 20% FEC. Applicants still needed to explain why every requested resource was necessary and proportionate to the work.

The award could support a single project for a maximum of three years, and every successful project had to start on 1 October 2027. The small-award structure placed a maximum of one full-time equivalent (FTE) research and innovation associate across the application. The page noted that technical or laboratory projects could need fractions of specialist RIA time, but the combined RIA effort could not exceed one FTE.

Applicant time was also capped. The combined applicant contribution for one application could not exceed 0.20 FTE. The project lead was expected to request at least 0.10 FTE to lead and manage the project, including scientific oversight and management or supervision of personnel. The cap included applicants contributing at zero salary, so a team could not add extra applicants outside the limit simply by listing their time as uncosted. Across the round, an applicant could request no more than 0.20 FTE in total across applications.

The page allowed researcher co-leads, provided their time was counted within the relevant FTE limits. Some projects could involve only applicant time, or applicant time plus technician time. There was no technician-FTE limit, but technician effort had to be specific to the project and justified in the resources and costs section.

Applicants could request and justify travel and subsistence, directly incurred costs, directly allocated other costs, and equipment. For high-performance computing, the guidance asked applicants to consider national facilities such as DiRAC before requesting HPC costs. If those facilities were unsuitable, the application needed to explain why. The page warned that DiRAC did not typically support code development requiring single or multiprocessors, small-scale test runs, or data visualisation in most cases.

The call did not provide a suggested cost formula. Applicants were expected to justify what the project needed rather than rely on old guideline formulas for staff or travel. Standard laptops and ordinary computer or administrative support were normally expected from indirect costs. A higher-specification laptop or project-specific administrative support could be requested only with a clear explanation. Reasonable-adjustment costs were allowed and were to be accepted when eligible.

Studentships were not permitted on small awards. That point corrects a misleading implication in the old page that PhD-related work packages might be funded. A proposal could include research and innovation staff, technicians, equipment, computing, travel, and other eligible project costs, but it could not use this call to request a studentship.

Who could apply

The official page required applicants to satisfy the general UKRI eligibility criteria for both the research organisation and the individual role. Its summary said that the project had to be based at a UK research organisation eligible for UKRI funding. Applications could come from a single research organisation or from a consortium of multiple research organisations. The lead research organisation was responsible for the submission.

The same page’s detailed “Who can apply” section says the opportunity was open to organisations with standard or non-standard eligibility and to organisations based overseas, subject to UKRI’s organisation-eligibility check. That wording should not be read as a blanket statement that every overseas organisation could act as project lead: the project lead and organisation still had to satisfy the role-specific UKRI rules. Anyone assessing eligibility for a future opportunity would need to check the then-current rules rather than copy this archived summary.

Project co-lead eligibility was open to UK applicants when the project lead was eligible. The opportunity used the UKRI Funding Service’s newer role names, including project lead, project co-lead, researcher co-lead, research and innovation associate, technician, specialist, grant manager, professional enabling staff, and visiting researcher. The role label did not remove the need to satisfy the applicable UKRI rules.

The 2026 round allowed a person to submit up to two applications across the astronomy observation and theory small-awards opportunity and this solar-and-planetary opportunity, but only one could name that person as project lead. The FTE limits described above applied as well. A person was not eligible to apply as project lead if they were already the project lead of a currently funded small award and the new funding would overlap. A person who had applied as project lead in the 2025 small-awards round and had been unsuccessful was also excluded from applying as project lead in this round.

The official page named Chloe Woodcock and Kim Burchell for questions about project-lead eligibility. That contact route was useful while the opportunity was open. It should not be read as evidence that the closing date could be extended or that a late application could be accepted.

How the application worked

The call ran through the UKRI Funding Service. The official page expressly said that applicants could not use the Joint Electronic Submissions (Je-S) system. The project lead was responsible for completing the application, while all team members and project partners were expected to contribute relevant information. Only the lead research organisation could submit the completed application to UKRI.

For the open cycle, the process was:

1. Select Start application on the UKRI Funding Finder page.
2. Confirm that the applicant was the project lead.
3. Sign in or create a UKRI Funding Service account, select the organisation, verify the email address, and set a password. If the organisation was not listed, the applicant needed to contact the Funding Service helpdesk. UKRI advised allowing at least 10 working days for an organisation to be added.
4. Answer the application questions in the Funding Service text boxes, or prepare responses offline and copy them into the service. Upload documents only where the form required them.
5. Check the application in read-only view before sending it to the research office.
6. Send the completed application to the research office for institutional checking.
7. The research office submitted the checked application to UKRI.

UKRI said that the application questions and assessment criteria were listed in the How to apply section. The application included a summary, vision and approach, team capability, resources and cost justification, ethics and responsible research and innovation, risk management, and other relevant sections. The vision and approach document had a four-side A4 limit in 11-point Arial or an equivalent sans-serif font, with three pages for vision and approach and one page for references. Exceeding the page or formatting rules could lead to rejection.

Applicants could use visuals where they communicated important information that was difficult to express in words. Images needed descriptive captions, had to follow the file-size and format rules, and could not be used as a substitute for paragraphs or tables. References belonged within the word count for the relevant question. Hyperlinks were to point directly to reference information; assessors were not required to follow links to conduct the assessment.

The completed application had to reach STFC by 10 March 2026 at 4:00pm UK time. UKRI warned that applicants could not apply after the deadline and should allow for earlier internal institutional deadlines. Once submitted, an application could not be changed or returned for amendment. Those instructions describe the completed 2026 process and are not a route for submitting now.

How to read the archived deadline and start date

The deadline and project start date describe different events. The deadline was 10 March 2026 at 4:00pm UK time. The required start date for a successful award was 1 October 2027, and the maximum research duration was three years. The later start date did not mean the opportunity remained open until 2027, and it did not create a rolling application route.

For an archive page, retaining the real deadline is more useful than replacing it with a guessed future date. The official page says the opportunity is closed and does not announce a next round. That is why this entry uses historicalReference = true, keeps 2026-03-10 in the deadline field, and states the status at the beginning of the article. Researchers seeking a live call should use the official UKRI Funding Finder and STFC announcements rather than assuming that a future round will keep these dates, limits, or application questions.

What a well-prepared proposal would have needed

Although no proposal can be submitted to this cycle now, the verified guidance provides a useful record for researchers preparing related work. The science should have been clearly inside solar system and planetary studies, not merely adjacent to astronomy. A modelling project needed to identify the solar or planetary question that the model would answer. A laboratory proposal needed to connect the experiment to solar system material or physics. A technology proposal needed to remain within the permitted early technology-development range and explain the scientific outcome it would enable.

The work plan needed to fit within three years and the fixed start date. The personnel plan needed to respect the one-FTE RIA envelope and the 0.20-FTE applicant cap. If technicians, HPC, equipment, travel, or specialist support were essential, the resources and costs section needed to connect each request to a defined project task. A proposal that assumed a studentship, unlimited postdoctoral support, or an automatic equipment budget would not have matched the official rules.

The team also needed to show that any existing support was distinct from the proposed small award. UKRI permitted applicants who had funding from other sources, but the applicant had to demonstrate that the programme in the small award was not duplicating existing support. International collaboration could be part of the work, subject to UKRI’s trusted research and innovation expectations and the applicable role and cost rules.

What to do after the 2026 cycle

There is no late-submission option shown on the official page, and no next round is announced there. Researchers with a similar idea should first check whether a current STFC, UKRI, UK Space Agency, or NERC opportunity is open and whether its remit matches the proposed science. They should then read the current call rather than copy the archived 80% FEC rate, FTE caps, eligibility exclusions, application questions, or 1 October 2027 start date.

The official opportunity page remains the authoritative record for this completed call:

https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/astronomy-solar-and-planetary-small-awards-2026/

The page was reachable when this entry was checked, and its organisation, status, dates, scope, funding rate, eligibility rules, resource limits, and application route are the basis for this historical summary.